[MD] Misunderstandings are driven by what we value not by the logic we use.

[David Morey]

Hi Dan

Thanks for the below. I think I will end the conversation here, you
are clearly not enjoying it, I have found it useful to clarify where
we disagree and think I understand where the differences lie now.

I understand the idea of saying experience is DQ and any division
after that is a matter of intellect. Obviously that allows a complete
rethinking of SOM and offers a good alternative. However, whether the MOQ
alternative you offer is the best option I am not sure, I think
that the alternative I am suggesting, where difference is found
in experience itself, so that we see shapes and colours, for
example as the proto-latch of what you call SQ, seems
to me a plausible option that has certain advantages,
although perhaps maybe certain disadvantages. I don't
understand why you can't see that the alternative I am
considering is just as little to do with SOM as the one
you defend and believe to be the one Pirsig presents.

I have always been happy to see what I am proposing
as either a different interpretation of what Pirsig has said
or if that is not possible as offering an alternative to what
Pirsig presents as his MOQ. Seems clear to me that there
can be many alternatives to SOM, in fact there are a
number of alternatives such as Heidegger and Whitehead.

I have tried to be robust in my defence of my views where
I think they have been incorrectly and pointlessly attacked
as being anything much to do with SOM. Whether they
are compatible or not with Pirsig's MOQ is a moot point,
I think it is quite likely they are not. Whether the MOQ
as it stands is better or not than the views I am
constructing for myself, well time will tell. Anyway thanks
for the chat, it would have been a lot easier if you
had not kept waiving an SOM red flag/card at me.
I think you are completely off target there, but it
does not look like I am ever going to convince you
of that. I will leave you in peace on this topic for now.

All the best
David Morey

-some comments below


>
> DM: I suggest static quality patterns are part of what we experience, that
> we can grant that our experience is real and can therefore confer
> ontological
> reality on them, if you expel SQ/patterns from experience (like Dan/DMB)
> then you think that if you give them ontological status you are projecting
> this status into a real that is outside of experience, if you keep
> SQ/patterns
> as part of experience you can use this to give them ontological status.
>

Dan:
No one is saying static quality patterns are not part of experience... they
are a memory of it. But they are experience itself. Bodvar Skutvik went
round and round with the same argument you are using. If static quality is
experience, then of course the MOQ is experience since it is a collection
of static intellectual patterns.

But the MOQ is NOT experience. It is a way of ordering reality that is more
expansive than in a world where only subjects and objects exist.

DM: I am suggesting we see experience as divided into dynamic and
patterned aspects, before we add any concepts, memory or intellect,
call them shapes and colours if you like, these are the proto-patterns
that allow us to move on to concepts and intellectual SQ.


> It is then a good idea, based on the metaphysics of experience, that SQ
> has ontological status, it is then a secondary aspect of your
> experience-realist
> philosophy to grant SQ a realist status, that SQ/patterns can also exist
> whilst you are not experiencing them, that's why they can be 
> re-experienced
> when you turn your back and cease to experience certain patterns and
> then turn to face and re-experience them.


Dan:
Damn these run-on sentences.

Anyway, no, the MOQ is NOT a metaphysics of experience. Again, that is a
huge mistake, one that leads to all manner of nonsensical notions as
witnessed by your twisting and turning above.


DM: Metaphysics of quality, where experience is dynamic, and nothing more?
Does that give you enough to do any metaphysics? Maybe MOQ is not a
metaphysics at all? If you divide experience into patterned and dynamic
then maybe you can do some metaphysical analysis I suggest. Worth
thinking about, well worth thinking about this in the light of what
Quentin Meillassoux suggests in After Finitude.


> Experience is entirely primary,
> we can base our SQ and DQ ontology on it, but we can also 'work out'
> that DQ and SQ can exist independently of our experience, and even
> historically prior to human experience, although not philosophically 
> prior,
> as we base our metaphysics and ontology on experience as primary,
> but, in a secondary move, our reason can go beyond experience and
> work out the value of realism and the pre-dating of patterns and change
> prior to our primary human experience. This may be too complicated for
> some people to handle but it makes a lot more sense of experience than
> pretending realism does not work or there was not a time prior  to
> human experience.


Dan:
I am not at all sure we are even discussing the MOQ here. I don't even know
how to begin to answer it. Your thinking is based on what? Not the MOQ,
obviously.

DM: Well that's my point, my take on the MOQ lets you make sense
of realism, the experience equals only DQ version of MOQ probably does not,
is that a problem you have to live with?


> Of course, there is no thinking and no working
> out of such conceptions prior to human experience, this is a dialectical
> reality of course,, interlinking human experience and our human reality,
> but this human reality can recognise realism and pre-human history.


Dan:
The MOQ does not deny evolution nor does it rewrite history in any way,
shape, or form. You seem to have gotten your panties into a twist over
nothing here. As I said, I am not at all sure we are discussing the same
thing here.

DM: I suggest your version of the MOQ leaves you troubled by scientific
realism, I would liked to have heard a better explanation of how you
see scientific realism given your views of the MOQ.


> dmb:
>
>> This attack on subjects and objects is really why we want clarify the
>> distinction between concepts (sq) and pre-intellectual experience (DQ).
>>
>
> DM: Problem is it banishing pre-conceptual experience that is not
> just DQ, i.e. a DQ with emerging with patterns, and saying all patterns
> have to involve
> concepts may work for rhetorical protectionism, but ends up embracing the
> disaster of non-realism, the same disaster that afflicts post-modernism.
>

Dan:
I do not believe you understand what dmb is saying here, nor does it appear
you are the least bit familiar with  the tenets of the MOQ. Or perhaps your
sentence construction needs some attention. I don't know. Anyway, he is not
saying we banish pre-conceptual experience. He is pointing out the
distinction between (static quality) concepts and (pre-intellectual)
experience (synonymous with Dynamic Quality).


DM: Of course I do, I am just challenging whether it makes sense, I am
inviting a defence or explanation that is all, and one that either rejects
or redescribes scientific realism, I have not had one but never mind.
I assume that where I want to say pre-conceptual patterns, you want
to say we can't talk about any such thing it is all DQ until we start
using concepts. I get that now, but is this a good description. I am
assuming human babies and non-human animals can recognise
patterns without having the use of concepts and language,
looks like you only have the option of calling this DQ and
can't really do any further work of the processes taking place,
this seems an unnecessary bind to me.


“The Metaphysics of Quality subscribes to what is called empiricism. It
claims that all LEGITIMATE KNOWLEDGE arises from the senses or by THINKING
> about what the senses provided. ” (LILA 99).
>>
>
>
> DM: Quite, the senses provide DQ and SQ, if DQ is undefinable, then we 
> need
> some SQ in our experience that we can define, and build concepts on, would
> DQ provide anything for concepts to work with, DMB and Dan seem to
> talk as if DQ can provide some hint or trace that concepts can latch
> on to, but why not call such hints or traces SQ?

Dan:
What you are asking is: why don't we just say there are pre-existing
objects in the world that provide hints so our concepts of them can arise.
But David, that is what the MOQ is meant to counter... it provides a
framework for an expanded viewpoint where subjects and objects are NOT
primary.

DM: Misrepresentation again, I never say objects, I don't want to think
in terms of objects, I am just saying we recognise patterns in experience
before we introduce concepts or language, I have assumed this is what SQ
means at the primary level, but clearly you only recognise DQ, but is that
the only primary reality of experience? I suggest not.


Dan:
Yes again. Dynamic Quality (experience) and static quality (memory of
experience) are both necessary to make sense of the world. Once experience
has been defined, it is no longer experience but a concept, a memory, a
static quality pattern that makes sense of that experience. The hot stove
example in Lila is a great example.

DM: So Dan do animals and babies experience SQ and concepts do you believe?


Dan:
This is such a broad question that I have no idea how to answer it. So far
as I know, human beings are animals too. If you are talking about such
critters as otters, penguins, and  turtles, then how would I know that? I
am not an otter, penguin, or turtle. And do you mean human babies? What
age? If you mean new-born, I am quite sure Robert Pirsig has answered this
question in Lila.

DM: Clarified above I hope.

Have you bothered reading Lila? If not, you really should. Great book. If
you have read it... take my word for it... you need to read it again. Were
I a teacher, like Ant, I would hand out some homework. I am not. So either
do it or leave me alone.

DM: Well such is DQ and SQ, I have read Lila quite differently to you
it seems, maybe I can suggest in turn that you consider the question
of how can the MOQ make real sense of scientific realism, and whether
we need to make room for the reality of pre-conceptual patterns and
with an open mind reread it again yourself. I will certainly reread it
again soon with a clearer understanding of your views in mind, so
many thanks for the responses you have provided, overall
I have enjoyed and found them interesting and useful.

All the best
David M